If you've been running a property management business for longer than a day or two, you know that it's a busy undertaking. There are seemingly innumerable tasks that eat into your schedule day after day.
Unfortunately, many of these tasks can be repetitive and monotonous—and leave you with the feeling of emptying your inbox only to see it full again the next morning. What's more, the more successful your business becomes, the more of these types of tasks you'll have to accomplish.
While you can't get away from this entirely when running a property management business, you may not know all the ways that automation can help you cut down on your daily workload. "Work smarter, not harder" is an oft-repeated mantra—and workflow automation is your ticket to realizing this day to day.
There is no way of getting around the work that you need to do in a day. Fortunately, however, there are ways to make it more efficient:
- You may be struggling to stay on top of routine communications.
- Maintenance requests might be nipping at your heels.
- Perhaps you can't keep your books straight to save your life.
- Maybe you have a system in place for some of these processes—but nothing that handles everything at once.
You'd be surprised at what you can automate, and how much easier it will make your life!
Why Automation?
Fundamentally, workflow automation is a way for you to cut down on the stress and workload that you deal with daily. No doubt, your daily tasks and customer interactions are stealing the lion's share of your time and energy. Using a comprehensive system to automate your property management workflows can free up your time in some remarkable ways.
If you've been at this business for a while, you may have a hard time stepping away from some fixed patterns of thought or older systems that got you through your first days on the job. Think about automation as a transformation: you're looking to rethink how your property management business runs on a deeper level. It may seem like a bit of a paradox, but the more hands-off you can make your business, the more successful you may be.
So, where can you start? Here are five significant ways that your property management business can benefit from adopting the right property management operating system in 2024.
1. Streamline Your Marketing Plan
You know the importance of inbound marketing to your property management marketing plan. Automating this process can allow you to shift the brunt of your routine marketing tasks onto a software platform.
- Automation can simplify your analysis of both individuals and whole audiences.
- You can get a better read on your audience's behavior and craft a more effective way to convert them from leads to clients.
- Automating this process can help you stay engaged with them more consistently.
- Never miss a follow-up email or message again.
A good marketing strategy is the first step towards realizing growth—and automating it can make it better.
2. Make Routine Communication Simple
Property management is ultimately a people business; routine calls, appointments, and meetings will occupy much of your time. It's possible to manage your appointment calendar by hand—people have been doing that as long as humans have transacted business, after all—but that doesn't mean that your paper appointment book or hand-tended outlook calendar is the best solution.
An excellent automation tool will allow you to quickly define a meeting space and method, promptly schedule a meeting or call, and ensure that you keep all parties in the loop. Automation can help you cut back on unwieldy group emails and extensive back and forth.
3. Stay Ahead of Your Inbox
It doesn't take much for your email inbox to get out of control. Chances are you'll end up with a sea of unread messages, an overly complicated management system, or essential messages that fall through the cracks.
Automation can help you stave off all three of these outcomes. While more critical correspondence may call for your direct attention, the right workflow automation for your inbox can dispense with more routine tasks (especially your inbound marketing efforts).
4. Be a Better Bookkeeper
Automating your more routine financial tasks can do a couple of things to make your business run better.
- Automation can ensure that you perform your usual data entry, billing, calculations, and similar tasks quickly and without the potential for human error.
- You'll also find that your time and energy are freed up for analyzing your financial data.
- You'll be better equipped to spot trends and patterns and get ahead of any issues.
5. Make Maintenance a Breeze
Finally, you can use automation tools to simplify your maintenance workflows. Effective maintenance is a pillar of property management—for your clients, their tenants, and their properties—so finding ways to manage this process more quickly and efficiently will always pay off. Cut out the "phone tag" and ensure that maintenance problems get stamped out with the shortest possible turn around.
Automating maintenance means taking routine, yet crucial tasks—like managing your HVAC needs—and transforming them from expensive time sinks into hands-off bliss.
How Can You Implement Automation Successfully?
Making effective use of the right property management automation tools can make a massive difference for your business. Like many things in business, automation requires careful consideration before implementation. You may find the perfect solution for every scenario described above—but if those solutions don't work together, then you've just swapped one set of tasks for another.
So, how do you know where to start? Where can you find a property management automation system that will work to address all the needs of your business without costly redundancies or gaps in capabilities?
The Geekly Media Property Management Operating System (PMOS) may be just what you're looking for. Our PMOS brings together administrative, marketing, operational, and service tools to address all of your needs with one easy-to-manage system. Reach out to Geekly Media today, and let's work together to grow your property management business—not your workload.
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